Friday, May 1, 2009

More Thoughts on Out of the Blue

Please don't get the impression that, based on 25 major league at-bats, I think that Omir Santos is going to be a major league catcher someday. He's a 28-year-old light-hitting journeyman with absolutely nothing on his professional resume to suggest he'll ever be anything more than that. He was the subject of my Flushing University column this week because, really, how many other positive stories are there to write about the Mets right now?

The truth is, I don't have a whole lot of Met-bashing in me this early in the season. Surely there are fingers to point, but on May 1 it's still too early to call for wholesale changes. The Mets simply weren't that good of a team coming out of Spring Training, so it's hard to be shocked and appalled by a 20-game stretch of .400 baseball. I predicted between 84 and 87 wins for this team in 2009 and I'm standing by that.

Yes, I think that Santos may catch lightning in a bottle for the rest of 2009 and provide the Mets 150 servicable at-bats as Brian Schneider's backup. Even then, that's only going to happen if Omar Minaya finds a taker for Ramon Castro to free up roster space. He couldn't do it all winter and I don't think he can do it now.

To rely on anything more from Omir Santos is to disregard eight years of performance and to focus solely on a week's worth of plate appearances. I know it is the Met Way to build a roster on hopes and dreams instead of consistency and performance, but that doesn't make it the logical thing to do.

1 comment:

Its not a week's worth of at-bats. He impressed in spring training which is why he was called up over other veterans. Don't mistake being in the minors for a long period of time for not being able to understand how to play the game—handle pitchers, move runners over, play an above adequate catcher etc. He's a professional baseball player, and every once in a while a guy like this gets the right chance in the right opportunity and it works out. I don't value Castro, never really have, so Santos or Castro, doesn't make a difference except for the fact that it took Castro to have to worry about his job before he actually got an RBI. I fully realize Castro won't and really can't be moved, I'm just happy to see somebody on this team actually play fundamentally sound.